FreightCenter Assists Greek Invasion of National Geographic Museum

There are times when companies contact FreightCenter for help shipping a few pallets of goods here and there. Then there are times when they need help organizing daily, weekly or even monthly freight shipping. But only once has someone contacted us to help transport a Trojan Horse.

That someone was the National Geographic Society.

Illumivation Studios, a long-time customer of ours, built a 3,700-pound replica of the storied gift from the tale of the Trojan War. Aptly named “Troy”, the horse was built to accompany “The Greeks”, a show which features 500 ancient artifacts never before seen outside of Greece. Troy started its journey in Chicago where the Illumivation studio is located. Its first home was The Field Museum, also in Chicago, where it straddled a nearby subway entrance.

FreightCenter contracted one of its partner carriers, Landstar to transport Troy from Chicago to the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C. Along the way, Troy and his fearless driver, Dave Wyman stopped at cities with Greek-inspired names: Delphi, Indiana; Troy and Athens, Ohio; and Philadelphia.

A freight shipment is difficult enough to plan as it is. When you add multiple stops along the way you need an organized logistics plan. That’s where FreightCenter’s National Account Manager Jeff Krook came into play.

Illumivation has worked with Jeff Krook starting this year and they’ve been so satisfied with their service that they referred National Geographic to him.

“It’s exciting to be part of something as big as assisting our customer, Illumivation Studios, to ship their custom (and GIANT) Trojan Horse for the National Geographic Museum tour. These kinds of shipments allow us to see the “Big Picture” impact we can make by working with our carriers,” says Krook.

Krook went above and beyond to ensure that everything went smoothly with the shipment from pickup on May 21 to when it arrived safely on May 26. He even called Landstar’s driver right before pickup to prep him for the journey ahead. All of Jeff’s preparations worked out. Troy made it Washington D.C. without any issues. Well, besides getting the 37-foot long flatbed stuck in the narrow streets of Philadelphia – a harmless snafu that turned into quite an entertaining spectacle.